Jen Colenutt/Special to Postmedia NetworkA mother elephant with her baby at Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. Hunting the world's largest land mammal has been banned in Kenya since the 70s, but poaching and loss of habitat still threaten their survival.

NAIROBI – Africa’s elephant population has plunged faster than almost anyone predicted, raising startling questions about the failure to protect one of the world’s largest mammals.

There are now only 352,271 savanna elephants in nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa, according to Elephants Without Borders, a research organization that just completed an 18-country census. Between 2007 and 2014, the elephant population declined by at least 30 percent, or 144,000 elephants, the study found.

Previous estimates had suggested that the population was considerably higher, making the results of the new study, called the Great Elephant Census, a devastating revelation.

“These dramatic declines in elephant populations are almost certainly due to poaching for ivory,” the study said. “Elephant poaching has increased substantially over the past 5-10 years, especially in eastern and western Africa.”

The researchers delivered their findings after years of travel across Africa in helicopters and bush planes, spending about 10,000 hours in the air. National Geographic called the study “the largest wildlife census in history.” Some of the countries included, such as Angola, had never before been surveyed.

Elephants Without Borders/AFP/Getty ImagesAn Elephants Without Borders airplane flying over a herd of elephants at the Ngoma border between Namibia and Botswana. The results of a three-year aerial survey of Africa's elephants published by the NGO revealed a dramatic 30 percent decline in African savannah elephant populations.

“If we can’t save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa’s wildlife?” said Mike Chase, the principal investigator in the census and the founder of Elephants Without Borders.

The population of savanna elephants declined dramatically as their land was destroyed. Their range “shrank from three million square miles in 1979 to just over one million square miles in 2007,” according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated PressZimbabwe National Parks official inspects the stock during a tour of the country's ivory stockpile at the Zimbabwe National Parks Headquarters in Harare in June. Demand for ivory has not abated despite international efforts to curb poaching.

In recent decades, poaching has added a devastating new threat.

Most of the ivory taken from elephants ends up in Asia, where it fetches as much as $1,000 per pound and is frequently used in unproven medicinal treatments.

As the Great Elephant Census researchers flew over much of Africa, they repeatedly saw the detritus of the poachers’ trade — large elephant carcasses left to rot in the sun.

Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania’s elephants experienced staggering population declines, which were much greater than previously known and expected

“Dead elephants remain visible for several years after dying,” the study notes.

Some countries were hit harder than others. In Cameroon, researchers found nearly as many dead elephants as live ones.

Great Elephant Census, Vulcan Inc. via APIn this June 2014 photo, African savanna elephants graze in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The number of savanna elephants in Africa is rapidly declining and the animals are in danger of being wiped out as international and domestic ivory trades continue to drive poaching across the continent, according to a study released Wednesday

“Of note, Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania’s elephants experienced staggering population declines, which were much greater than previously known and expected,” researchers said in a statement.

The study, which was funded largely by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, revealed that Tanzania’s elephant population declined by 53 percent between 2009 and 2015, from about 109,000 in 2009 to 51,000 in 2015.

“We anticipated the decline, but not at this level,” Edward Kohi, principal researcher for the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, told National Geographic.

Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty ImagesElephants Without Borders census of African elephants is a first-of-its-kind survey. It involved flying over 18 countries with scientists and conservationists counting live elephants and carcasses to establish a baseline for future studies of elephant populations and how to protect them better.

Many African nations have attempted to boost their conservation efforts, particularly through the creation of anti-poaching units deployed to national parks, savannas and forests.

Earlier this year, Kenya set fire to 105 tons of ivory, an attempt to prove, in the words of President Uhuru Kenyatta, that “for us, ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants.” The United States recently announced a near-total ban on the ivory trade.

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But for all the attention that poaching — and the subsequent decline in elephants — has received, there’s no sign that it will stop anytime soon. On much of the continent, desperately poor poachers are paid far more than they would earn otherwise to target elephants and rhinos. If they are caught, which is relatively rare, they often serve short jail sentences.

JOHANNESBURG — A year ago, a South African rhino survived a horrific attack by poachers who hacked off her horns and part of her face. This month, the rhino dubbed Hope is undergoing new facial reconstruction to reduce the wound over her exposed sinus cavities.

Wildlife veterinarians have fixed medical elastic bands across the rhino’s wound and will assess the results next week. The bands are meant to act like shoelaces, stretching skin on both sides closer together. The equipment, designed for human patients with abdominal wounds, was provided by Canadian company Southmedic through its South African distributor, Surgitech.

“We’re confident in the way that it works with human skin, and hoping that the same reaction will happen with the rhino skin,” Genna Woodrow, a Southmedic manager, said in a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Barrie, Ontario.

Saving the SurvivorsA team applies a bandage to Hope, after the rhino was attacked by poachers last year.

Often, with a human patient, such elastic bands are left exposed because they are adjusted frequently. However, veterinarians applied a protective dressing to the rhino’s wound to keep it clean.

Hope was darted by poachers, who severed her horns while she was sedated, exposing her sinus cavities and nasal passage. She has been cared for by Saving the Survivors, a group that treats rhinos with gunshot wounds and other poaching injuries.

South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos, has struggled to curb the slaughter of rhinos, whose horns are coveted in parts of Asia, particularly Vietnam. Some consumers believe the horns have medicinal benefits. There is no evidence to support that: The horn is made of keratin, a protein also found in human fingernails.

Hope has regrown a small amount of horn since the attack, said Chris du Plessis, product manager at Surgitech. He described it as a “miracle.”

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities on Monday bombed the last major ship internationally wanted for years of illegally taking toothfish from southern waters, reiterating a strong message to would-be poachers who enter the country’s waters.

The navy seized the Nigeria-flagged Viking on Feb. 25 operating in waters off Tanjung Berakit in Riau Islands province south of Singapore. It was one of the half dozen ships dubbed the “Bandit 6” by the non-profit Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which hunted the boats and was among those who alerted Indonesian officials when the Viking entered the country’s waters.

“This is to serve as a deterrent to others,” Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti told reporters. She posed on the beach with a group of navy officials, their fists raised in the air with the smoking boat behind them. “You may go freely in the rest of the world, but once entering Indonesia, this is the consequence.”

The Viking was operating as a so-called ghost ship, frequently changing its name and registry and not broadcasting any type of satellite signal so that its whereabouts could be tracked, said Siddharth Chakravarty, Sea Shepherd’s campaign leader, by satellite phone from a ship in the Indian Ocean.

“I wish there were more governments standing up for what they can do within their legal instruments and not worry about how international diplomacy is going to play out after that,” he said, adding that the Viking had been fishing for 13 years in Antarctica and spotted 18 times, but it always escaped.

The Viking was the last in operation of the “Bandit 6” known to be illegally catching toothfish in the Southern Ocean. Patagonian toothfish, also known as Chilean sea bass, is popularly served in the United States, and fishing stocks are now better managed after years of plundering. However, U.S.-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch recommends avoiding eating the fish unless it comes from certain areas.

The Viking’s Chilean captain and crew members have been detained in Indonesia. Interpol went after the ship in 2013 following a complaint from Norwegian authorities about illegal fishing in that country’s waters.

“This is just a first step,” said Stig Traavik, Norway ambassador to Indonesia who witnessed the bombing. “In the future, it will be much more difficult to do illegal fishing, and the fish catch for local fishermen will go up.”

Huge plumes of smoke and flames engulfed the Viking after the explosives were detonated. Part of the ship will be set up as a monument to mark the country’s fight against illegal fishing.

The country has taken a tough stance against illegal fishing since Widodo took office in 2014. Pudjiastuti has seized and blown up around 150 illegal fishing boats from a number of countries after declaring a fishing moratorium for foreign vessels.

Last year, The Associated Press exposed a slave island in a remote part of eastern Indonesia where fishermen from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand had been trafficked and forced to fish with little or no pay for years at a time. Pudjiastuti responded by ordering the men rescued from the island. Since then, more than 2,000 men have been freed and returned home.

In the half-light of a South African dawn, the team works quickly, pinning the stricken rhino down and using a hacksaw to remove its horn.

In most cases across southern Africa, the animal will die to provide a commodity coveted in Asia as medicinal. But in this case, its horn is harvested to keep poachers away.

John Hume’s farm is the world’s biggest captive breeding operation and houses 1,261 rhinos, four per cent of the global population.

Around one ton of rhino horn is produced by Hume’s animals each year. At present he is fighting a court battle with the South African government to sell a five-ton stockpile, arguing that it would help slow the illegal trade as well as sustain his own breeding operation.

MUJAHID SAFODIEN / AFP / Getty ImagesA rhino is captured to have its horn trimmed at Rhino Ranch, run by John Hume — a private rhino owner/breeder in South Africa, who strongly advocates for legalizing trade.

“It’s not the demand for rhino horn that’s killing our rhino, it’s the way that demand is currently supplied,” the former property developer told The Daily Telegraph this week.

MUJAHID SAFODIEN / AFP / Getty ImagesCut off rhino horns are weighed and stored at John Hume's ranch in Klerksdorp on Feb. 3.

In the 1970s, there were 65,000 rhinos roaming the plains of Africa but today the number has dwindled to 26,000.

Millions of dollars have been poured into the anti-poaching effort. Security operations include drones and dogs, celebrities queue to plead for rhinos’ lives and campaigns in Asia try to dispel the notion horns can cure cancer or hangovers.

But Hume argues that rather than trying to fight criminal syndicates or squash traditions going back centuries, he and fellow farmers should be allowed to practise a sustainable trade, since horn grows back and can be harvested every 18 months.

Conservationists say he is at best naive to think such a supply can keep up with demand and at worst greedy.

He rejected the suggestion his motive was to get rich and said the cited value of rhino horn as $76,000 a kilo was “grossly exaggerated”.

“If I were able to sell, I could maybe just scrape by running my farm,” he said. “I am de-horning them to make them less attractive to poachers but having done that, it’s stupid not to use that to protect them.”

MUJAHID SAFODIEN / AFP / Getty ImagesDe-horned rhinos roam on the field at John Hume's ranch earlier this month.

Despite a security operation that consists of guards, twice-daily roll calls, a helicopter, infrared sensors and electric fencing, Hume’s farm has been hit repeatedly by poachers who kill just for the broad stump left behind.

All he wants, he insists, is to make enough money to make rhino breeding sustainable so he can hand his farm on to his son.

“It is my life’s ambition to save the rhino from extinction,” he said. “The best thing we can do is breed and protect them.”

PETERBOROUGH, Ont. — Kent Hodgin is telling the story of James Hockaday, a moose poacher from Peterborough who probably thought he had it made.

Hockaday shot a moose out of hunting season, which is illegal. But without any eyewitnesses it was, in theory, the perfect crime. The killer puffed away on some cigarettes in a hunting blind after pulling the trigger, then skedaddled, leaving the animal to rot. And that was that, says Hodgin, an Ontario conservation officer, until some wildlife officers appeared at the poacher’s door with a search warrant and asked if he had killed the moose.

“He kept saying, ‘Nope, nope, I didn’t shoot that moose,’ ” Hodgin recalls. “And he was smoking a cigarette. He tossed it on the ground and went back into the house and guess what?”

Conservation officers retrieved the cigarette butt. They had found some butts from the hunting blind, testing them for DNA. They did the same for the butt the suspect discarded outside his door. They matched.

AP Photo/Rebecca BlackwellA baby hippo bobs next to its mother in a Kenyan Game Reserve. An Ontario lab is helping the nation tackle poachers.

Hockaday was fined $9,000 and had his guns confiscated. Catching the poacher is a story the conservation officer has often told to school groups and trainees, but never to an audience like the one gathered in a small conference room at Trent University’s Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory one sunny afternoon the other day.

Six Kenyans — a veterinarian, a molecular biologist, two lab technicians, a lawyer and a deputy conservation director — from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), sat jotting notes, taking pictures and asking questions.

Trent’s wildlife forensic lab is a world leader in the world of CSI for furry critters. Using animal DNA — hair, blood — and occasionally human DNA, the lab has been helping track poachers since 1991.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostForensic Director Bradley White speaks to members of the Kenyan Wildlife Service in the DNA lab at Peterborough's Trent University, Tuesday March 24, 2015

“People heard shots from an island where hunting was prohibited,” he says. “A boat landed at the nearest docks laden with deer meat, but the hunters claimed they had killed the deer further up the coast.

“Conservation officers found the kill site and took some DNA samples. We compared those samples with the meat samples in the boat. It was the first time animal DNA was presented as evidence in a North American court.”

The verdict? Guilty.

The Kenyans’ Peterborough trip was paid for by the Canadian government as part of a $2-million “emergency” fund to combat wildlife trafficking in Eastern Africa. Part of the money, about $465,000, has gone toward establishing a wildlife DNA lab in Nairobi, only the second of its kind in Africa. It officially opens Tuesday.

“We have used actual DNA before, but only at limited levels,” says Moses Otiende, a molecular biologist in charge of the new lab. Otiende has ambitious plans for the facility, including building a comprehensive African elephant DNA database so when an ivory letter stamp, say, shows up in Shanghai, it can be traced back to an elephant carcass in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Peter J. Thompson/National PostPatrick Omondi, Deputy Director Species Conservation and Management of the Kenyan Wildlife Service speaks in the DNA lab at Peterborough's Trent University, Tuesday March 24, 2015.

The trip to Canada was a start, an opportunity to hone the practical skills required to extract DNA and analyze samples, using Ontario black bear fur as a stand-in for rhino horn and elephant ivory.

The Kenyans, and the elephants, and the rhinos, need all the help they can get. Hunting the two animals was banned in Kenya in 1978, but the slaughter in Africa continues at an industrial pace. Ivory poachers killed 100,000 African elephants in 2011-14, according to one American study.

Asian buyers prize ivory as a status symbol and an ingredient in traditional medicines. The Vietnamese believe rhino horn cures cancer. Horns sell for $100,000 a kilogram on the country’s black market. The demand for dead African animal bits remains high, as do prices, as do the wages smuggling networks pay poachers — compared to the paltry salaries of KWS employees.

But Patrick Omondi, deputy director of the KWS, remains optimistic the war can be won.

“Through DNA, we will be able to track the crime chain,” he says. “It is often easy to catch the person who does the killing. But it is the person in the middle, the traffickers — the king pins — and the end consumers that are hard to identify.”

Poach a moose in northern New Brunswick and the penalty is a fine. Poach an elephant in Kenya and the penalty is life in prison. Francis Gakuya, a veterinarian from rural Kenya, whispers “diplomats” are a major part of the African problem. He does not elaborate.

There was no evidence of corruption among the Kenyans in Peterborough. They were staying at a Motel 6. Only two ordered food at the university cafeteria for lunch, sharing their plates with the others. Three opted for large coffees, an expense Ettah Muango, the lawyer, likened to having dinner at the finest “restaurant” in Nairobi.

Back at the DNA building, the Kenyans briefly stopped taking notes and laughed, nervously, when Kent Hodgin, the conservation officer, admitted that he “loved to hunt.”

His 12-year-old daughter shot her first deer a while back with a bow and arrow.

“I cried and she cried and we hugged, because it was so special,” he said. Hunting tied him to the land and the animals he loves and works to protect. To the Kenyans, this sounded a bit wacky.

“For us, the death of an animal is something that hurts the heart,” Omondi said. “It is hard for us to understand how hunting can be part of a culture.”

The deputy director hoped the Peterborough trip was the beginning of an ongoing relationship between the university and Kenyan wildlife experts. There was so much more to learn. Indeed. As the afternoon ebbed away, there was talk among the Africans of a visit to the local canoe museum.

Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park is home to the largest number of wild animals in any one place in the world. The pastoral Maasai tribe who live around the park call it “Serengit,” which means endless plain. It is what the Earth looked like when our ancestors left this rift valley country a mere 50,000 years ago, to populate the rest of the world. The Serengeti has changed little since then. For that reason, many visitors have nicknamed it “Pleistocene Park,” as it gives sightseers a taste of what the world was like when human beings were a mere dot on the landscape, centuries before the rise of agriculture in the ancient civilizations of the Nile valley. No film or book can substitute for the visceral experience of a wildlife safari in one of the last pristine wilderness environments on Earth.

Today, the Serengeti is still home to herds of elephant, giraffe, zebra, lion, buffalo and the more than one million wildebeest, who each year migrate between the Serengeti in Tanzania and its northern extension, the Maasai Mara park over the border in Kenya. This great migration is one of the world’s most impressive natural events. It involves about 1.3 million wildebeest, 500,000 Thomson’s gazelle, 97,000 topi, 18,000 eland and 200,000 zebra.

These migrants are followed along their annual, circular route by hungry predators such as lions and hyenas. The Serengeti also contains crocodiles, hippopotamuses, gazelles and more than 450 species of tropical birds. Some anthropologists argue that the story of the Garden of Eden is an traditional tale that harkens back to the time when the world was young and our ancestors were all hunters and gatherers, scavenging and surviving among wild animals in environments such as the Serengeti — a place that happens to be close to Olduvai Gorge, where archaeologist Louis Leakey discovered early man.

The more than 2,000 elephants that are now part of the Serengeti Park ecosystem are protected by trained and armed Tanzanian Park Rangers. They are materially and logistically supported by a range of international conservation organizations, such as the Frankfurt Zoological Society, which sponsored the 1959 Academy Award winning documentary film that called for the future conservation of Serengeti, Serengeti Shall Not Die.

Recent ecological studies have shown that the elephants of the Serengeti “know” that it is safer to stay in the park than range outside of its borders, where villagers may hunt them for meat and tusks, as scientists have shown that elephants learn and communicate effectively with one another and that they have memories that are longer than their trunks.

Today, Africa is experiencing another continent-wide upsurge of elephant poaching. Each year, about 25,000 elephants are killed across the land. During the last decade, poachers have killed off 60% of Africa’s elephants. Experts believe that poachers kill at least 25 elephants each day in Africa.

This is not a new phenomenon. A mere 100 years ago, the elephants of the Serengeti were few and far between. During the late 19th century, their numbers were declining, as Swahili hunters were killing them off in record numbers to provide Britain and Europe with billiard balls and white piano keys. Only when Tanzania (then Tanganyika) came under British control, were the lessons of modern biology and ecology applied to Britain’s East African dominions. In 1940, the Serengeti was declared a protected area. Big game hunting was banned and the elephant herds bounced back. In 1951, it became a national park. During the early days of Tanzanian independence, elephant numbers were up, but during the 1970s and ’80s, poachers across Africa were decimating elephant herds and selling their ivory to buyers in the Far East, who were using it to make ivory sculptures.

In 1989 my former employer, Richard Leakey, of archaeological and wildlife conservation fame, managed to convince then president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi, to support his campaign to ban ivory sales worldwide. Together they succeeded, and within a decade, elephant populations once again bounced back across Sub_Saharan Africa. But then something happened that no one had foreseen.

Richard Moller/Tsavo Trust

China, which was experiencing an industrial revolution, realized that Africa could become its source of raw materials, its breadbasket and a place of emigration from its crowded cities. Almost overnight, the Chinese became the most powerful economic and political force in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are now more than one million Chinese living across the continent, and as their economic prospects improve, they would almost all like to buy ivory or ivory products. This has triggered the most recent wave of elephant poaching in Africa and facilitated equally massive amounts of smuggling along the Indian Ocean coast, which is used to bring this illegal ivory to Asian markets. Although the Serengeti’s elephants are still well protected, other herds from Mali to the Red Sea are suffering serious losses due to poaching.

Today, it is the religious beliefs of the Chinese and South East Asians (including Catholic Philipinos) that is driving the trade and causing this latest drop in Africa’s elephant populations. Now, most smuggled ivory ends up as carvings of Baby Jesuses and Saints in the Philippines, Islamic prayer beads in the Muslim world, Coptic Crosses in Egypt and a range of religious sculptures in Buddhist countries. China, however, consumes the lion’s share.

There are 200 million Buddhists in China, countless millions in Thailand and Southeast Asia and 75 million Catholics in the Philippines. All of them use ivory for the creation of sacred statues that are blessed by priests, and which are then considered to have given the ivory some sort of religious or magical power that brings good fortune to the owner.

In China, ivory is used to create large and exquisitely carved statues for Buddhist and Taoist clients. A credible witness saw one carving of this nature on sale for $215,000 dollars. Buddhist monks in China perform a ceremony called “opening the light,” which takes profane ivory and makes it sacred. Some Chinese Buddhists argue that if you truly respect the Buddha, you must use a precious material such as ivory, which is considered even more valuable than gold.

Researchers who have studied the trade have noted that many Buddhist and Catholic priests are well aware that the ivory is smuggled. Because these are very religious countries where ivory is considered sacred, it is easy to smuggle either raw ivory or carved sculptures in and out of these states. In the minds of many, ivory is the opposite of contraband drugs, which are deadly and profane. So there is little motivation to curb the trade, as, in many countries, the sacred trumps the secular law and the international treaties that are ignored by almost everyone.

Going undercover for National Geographic, researcher Bryan Christy wrote, “If someone in the Philippines wants to smuggle an ivory statue of the baby Jesus to the U.S., Msgr. Cristobal Garcia is happy to advise, ‘Wrap it in old, stinky underwear and pour ketchup on it so it looks sh—y with blood.…This is how it is done.’ Monsignor Garcia is head of protocol for the archdiocese of Cebu, the largest in the Philippines, giving him a flock of nearly four million in a country of 75 million Roman Catholics, the world’s third largest Catholic population. The tradition of carving ivory into religious pieces in the Philippines is so deeply rooted that in Cebu the word for ivory, garing, also means ‘religious statue.’ ”

The presumptive 2012 nominee, Romney is expected to make a steady, "do-no-harm" choice and avoid the type of "Hail Mary" selection that Palin represented, in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama.In picking a vice presidential running mate, Republican Mitt Romney wants to avoid the Sarah Palin syndrome.
Then-Republican nominee John McCain shook up the 2008 race with his dramatic choice of the relatively unknown Palin, but the problems she faced during the campaign will be on the minds of Romney and his vice presidential search team.
The presumptive 2012 nominee, Romney is expected to make a steady, "do-no-harm" choice and avoid the type of "Hail Mary" selection that Palin represented, in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama.
[np-related]
Aides say Romney wants someone with deep, rock-solid experience who could take over the presidency if needed. Being able to work well as a team player is also essential.
Romney seems unlikely to pick a No. 2 from the group of candidates who ran for the nomination this year and lost.
That would rule out Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Herman Cain. It seems doubtful that Romney's last chief rival, conservative Rick Santorum, would be selected although he may end up on the short list for appearance's sake.
But Tim Pawlenty, a conservative former Minnesota governor, is popular within the Romney campaign and will likely be given consideration. Well-regarded by evangelicals, Pawlenty has spoken up for Romney since he pulled out of the race.
Most Republicans want a candidate who at the very least will not damage Romney's chances of defeating Obama and, ideally, would bolster the ticket.
Palin, the former Alaska governor, energized the Republicans' conservative base and still does. But in the 2008 campaign, her lack of knowledge about global affairs and her inability to name a newspaper she reads, made her the stuff of late-night comics and ultimately undermined McCain's candidacy.
This would seem to limit the chance that someone could be plucked out of obscurity, as Palin was.
"There's surprise and then there's big surprise, and I think you want a lower-case surprise," said Republican strategist Tucker Eskew.
One other factor Romney must weigh is whether to make a glitzy choice who could excite Republicans but overshadow Romney himself, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
"Clearly there are risks to having someone who is more dynamic or who is more of a firecracker than yourself," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "The benefit of having a someone who is much more dynamic than you is that it creates excitement around your candidacy. The downside is if this person goes off message and over-reaches, it can have a negative impact on the campaign."
A decision is unlikely until just before Republicans meet in Tampa in late August to crown Romney as their nominee.
Here's a look at who many Republicans think are the top contenders, the second-tier candidates and the long shots.
<strong>THE SHORTEST OF SHORT LISTS</strong>
The focus of the greatest speculation has been on five big names in the party: Three are Ohio Senator Rob Portman, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.
Rounding out the top five are New Jersey's Christie and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
-- Portman, 56, endorsed Romney early on and campaigned with him in Ohio, helping the former Massachusetts governor to a narrow win in a battleground state that will be key to whether Romney wins the White House. Portman is a relatively low-key but deeply experienced politician and would be seen as a safe, steady choice. But as a former budget director for Republican President George W. Bush, Portman would be an easy target for Democrats, who could accuse him of contributing to the dire fiscal shape the government's finances are in. He also served as U.S. trade representative, which could be crucial experience in Romney's desire for expanding U.S. exports abroad and fairer global trade. He has not ruled out accepting a vice presidential nod.
-- Rubio, 40, is a Cuban-American who, if selected, would be seen as a bridge to the growing Hispanic population that votes heavily in favor of Democrats. All eyes will be on him Monday as he campaigns in Pennsylvania with Romney. Republicans acknowledge the need for attracting a greater percentage of Latinos to their party. At the same time, picking him could energize conservatives who have been less than enthusiastic about the more moderate Romney. Counting against Rubio would be his relative youth and inexperience. He has only been a senator since his 2010 election and has no major legislative track record. Many Republicans see him as a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination itself, which could be a big reason why he might want to sit out 2012. Rubio on Sunday touted former Florida governor Jeb Bush as a "fantastic" choice as Romney's running mate but remained coy about whether he himself would accept such an offer.
-- Ryan, 42, bonded with Romney during the Wisconsin primary in April as the two criss-crossed the state together. He is a rising star within the party. "He is always a very strong leader of the Republican Party," Romney told Fox Radio of Ryan. And picking him could help Romney win Wisconsin, a state that has eluded Republicans in recent elections despite vigorous campaigns there. What Romney and his aides will have to debate is whether picking Ryan would make his controversial budget-cutting plan a central feature of the campaign. Ryan's 2013 budget blueprint would cut $5 trillion more than Obama has proposed and would make deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid social programs for the poor and elderly. Romney has given general support to Ryan's plan but not an outright endorsement. Whether Ryan has sufficient life experience outside of Washington could also work against him. By choosing Ryan, Romney would be making a statement that it is fine to make the race a referendum on the U.S. budget and the Ryan plan. Ryan has said he would consider being the No. 2. "If this bridge ever comes that I should cross it, then I'll think about it then. It's not the time to think about it," he told the Wall Street Journal.
-- Christie, 49, is a rock star in the Republican Party. He chose not to run for president in 2012 and instead endorsed Romney. He has been an effective advocate for him on the campaign trail. As a Republican governor in a mostly Democratic state, he has taken on entrenched Democratic institutions there with fervor. A bombastic politician who is fluent on the issues, Christie would be an ideal attack dog on the campaign trail. Some conservatives would frown on the pick, fearing he is too moderate. Some Republicans also worry that the contentious Christie could be a distraction with his verbal fire-bombs, or overshadow Romney, who sometimes has trouble connecting with voters. Also potential concerns are Christie's massive girth and whether his health could withstand the pressures of the job. A Quinnipiac University poll last week found him the lead choice of likely voters for the No. 2 slot. He hasn't ruled it out. "If Governor Romney comes to me and wants to talk about it, I'll always listen," he told a town hall event earlier this month.
-- Jindal, 40, is a major voice in the conservative movement and could help Romney patch up relations with a base that was reluctant to choose him during the long, bitter primary fight. Jindal is an Indian-American and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As governor, he grappled with the fallout and recovery from the 2010 BP oil spill that shattered fishing communities along Louisiana's Gulf coast, and was seen as handling it well. When given a big opportunity on the national stage, however, he flubbed when he delivered the Republican response to Obama's 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress. The question for Romney would be whether Jindal is too timid a pick for the attack-dog role the vice presidential candidate often plays. He has not ruled out accepting the VP nod if asked.
<strong>LONGER SHOTS</strong>
Beyond those five, the secondary possibilities include Pawlenty, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.
-- Pawlenty would bring a reliably conservative voice to Romney's team and would appeal to evangelicals, whose energy and enthusiasm will be needed to turn out the vote. His problem during his failed 2012 campaign was that he was not an electrifying presence on the trail.
-- McDonnell backed Romney early and could help deliver his home state to the Republicans after they lost it to Obama in 2008. Then again, the growing population of Democrats in Northern Virginia could mean Obama wins it again even with McDonnell on the ticket. McDonnell would face questions about a law he pushed through the state legislature requiring women to have an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion. Romney opposes abortion but may want to avoid anything that could distract from his central economic message. Republicans are having enough trouble appealing to women voters as it is, which is why McDonnell is unlikely to be the choice.
-- Jeb Bush would be a bold choice because he could overshadow Romney. A conservative, Bush has led the national debate on reforming the U.S. education system, and he could help Romney win the crucial battleground state of Florida. He is often mentioned as a future presidential candidate. His biggest problem is simply sharing the Bush name, after his brother, George W. Bush, left the White House in 2009 as an unpopular figure. While Republicans in general would have no problem with a Bush on the ticket, independent voters who will be key to the election could be turned off. Chances are that Bush sits out 2012 and contemplates a 2016 race for the presidency.
-- Daniels drew rave reviews for a speech in 2011 that declared America's debt crisis a new "red menace." He opted against a presidential run despite ardent pleas for him to make a late leap into the campaign. Daniels cited family reasons for deciding not to run. His personal story is complicated. He was divorced after his wife left him with their children for another man, but they were later reunited in what Daniels called a classic love story. He may want his family to avoid media attention. He has said he does not want to be considered by Romney.
<strong>ALSO IN THE MIX</strong>
Toss into the mix these names as well:
-- New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte has close ties to Romney and campaigned heavily with him in her home state in the Republican primary. She might be too inexperienced, since she has only been in the Senate for less than two years.
-- A pair of Hispanic governors, Nevada's Brian Sandoval and New Mexico's Susana Martinez. Choosing one or the other would signal Romney's intention to compete strongly for the Hispanic vote, which could be pivotal in Southwestern states. Martinez is relatively inexperienced, only serving as governor for 15 months, and may be likened to Palin as a little-known woman governor from a small state. Martinez has said repeatedly she is not interested in serving as vice president.
-- Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would provide deep foreign policy knowledge. She has said repeatedly she does not want to be considered. But Republicans in a poll last week cited her as their top choice for the job. Her downsides are that she has no real record on domestic policy issues and her tenure as a top Bush aide linked to the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also shown little inclination to leave academic life at Stanford University. But the lure of being the first African-American woman to become vice president could be hard to pass up.

Christy also met with corrupt Buddhist monks in Thailand who deal in smuggled ivory and heard of one who even poisons local elephants to get their tusks. This takes place in a land where Buddhism is the state religion and the elephant is a national symbol.

To aggravate matters even further, the Chinese authorities have recently and dramatically raised the price of ivory. This increases its black market value in Africa, and acts as an incentive to poachers and smugglers throughout the continent, especially in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, whose coastline gives them easy access to Asian markets. During the last three years alone, on the once-sleepy tourist island of Zanzibar, Tanzanian authorities seized a number of shipments of illegal ivory, including a 40-foot container that held several tonnes. These seizures are just the tip of the iceberg. Bear in mind that the illegal sale of two tusks of Tanzanian ivory on the black market is the equivalent to a year’s salary for many people in the region.

Even the Hollywood glitterati are beginning to show concern for the elephant. At an event held in Malibu, Leonardo Di Caprio, Barbara Streisand and a host of other celebrities raised millions of dollars for the Elephant Crisis Fund. But the fund’s director is Kenya-based conservationist Dr. Ian Douglas Hamilton, who has been unsuccessfully fighting to protect African elephants for the last 50 years. Perhaps this money should be directed somewhere else.

The best way to stop this is to reduce the demand for ivory and support the nature preserves

Conservation organizations in Europe and the United States have been slow to wake up to the fact that, in order to save the African elephant, they will have to get involved with massive publicity campaigns in China and other Asian countries. One survey carried out in China suggested that a majority of those polled thought that ivory falls out of elephants’ mouths like old teeth, and they had no idea that most of it was poached and smuggled into their country.

Unlike Hamilton, Peter Knights heads a pressure group called Wild Aid. He has argued that only a “demand-side” approach to elephant conservation will reduce poaching. This means working with Chinese celebrities, such as basketball star Yao Ming, to persuade China’s newly empowered middle class that ivory statues made of smuggled tusks will not bring the blessings that their priests have promised them. Towards the same end, the American Buddhist Confederation has lobbied New York and other states to ban ivory sales, as Manhattan has been central to the ivory trade.

During my 17 years in East Africa, I met many of the first Chinese entrepreneurs who had come to the continent to make their fortunes. I found them to be interested in, and open to, the world. They are also interested in wildlife and enjoy going on Safari in game parks such as the Serengeti, as much as anyone else. If a concentrated media campaign was aimed at them, utilizing Chinese media celebrities, the demand for ivory could disappear in a short period of time. In the meantime, we in the West can help in another way.

We can make sure that we still visit Africa’s game parks. Every dollar spent on a Safari in Tanzania goes toward park fees, local employment, food, hotels, tented camps, transportation and park patrols. And it provides poor countries such as Tanzania with the hard currency and tax base that their governments need to persuade their own citizens that game parks can pay their own way and contribute to national development. If Western tourists stop coming, it will be impossible for the conservation organizations alone to save the elephant. We have to do our part by showing up.

National Post

Anthropologist Geoffrey Clarfield will be visiting the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Olduvai Gorge this winter. Those interested in joining him can call Thomson Safaris at 617-923-0426 and ask for “Geoffrey Clarfield’s Tanzanian Safari.”